


Given, Taken

by irrationalno



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Black Paladin Shiro (Voltron), Field trips, Gen, Happy Birthday Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, amateur knitter keith, black loves shiro, doting husband ulaz, grab bag au, haggar loves shiro only in a different way, matt isn't dating a robot i think, post-war AU, shiro fam stuff, stolen stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29780910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalno/pseuds/irrationalno
Summary: Shiro has a fairly eventful 31st.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Matt Holt & Shiro, Shiro & Black Lion (Voltron), Shiro/Ulaz (Voltron)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Given, Taken

Shiro had a weird feeling about this. Black sensed his anxiety and sent out the telepathic equivalent of a firm wall at his back. He’d left her in the clearing they’d landed in even though flying her right to these coordinates would have saved them time.

Matt whistled, glancing back at Shiro. “I don’t think the Rebels ever even knew about this facility.”

“They were fucking over the known universe for ten thousand years. I don’t think we’ll find all their bases by the end of our lifetimes.” Keith paused to record some video of the structure.

They’d walked from a clearing in the forest to the edge of a cliff. It wasn’t a very long walk, it had to be under 20 miles. A vast ocean roared below. The building standing on the cliff edge did not seem to be anything like the Empire facilities they’d seen or explored before, in all their varieties. They’d seen military barracks, labs, mines, warehouses, power stations, cafetarias, auditoriums... For sure, the colour scheme and some of the design elements were clearly Late Empire style. But Shiro knew everyone was thinking the same thing: the closest match was the Castleship as it had stood on Arus.

This expedition had been his idea, though. Atlas had finished some work in the quadrant and Shiro could afford to go back to Earth base a couple movements later. Coincidentally Matt had been in the area too and of course they’d decided to meet up, get lunch. Keith had his day off from emergency medical pilot duties. Ulaz simply went anywhere Shiro did. It was a good impromptu reunion. Hanging out for the weekend with his childhood best friend, his Best Friend, and his boyfriend was not a bad way to spend his 31th birthday, Shiro reasoned. There was a large moon nearby with no known sentient inhabitants but with an Earth-like atmosphere, according to Atlas. It all fell into place smoothly.

He should have known better than to trust anything that looked smooth and easy. It didn’t make sense how none of the satellite imagery had shown this prominent, exposed structure even though there was no way it was recent. The moon had some Empire revivalists stashed away, whose trap they were walking into. Or it was something else that was bad.

Shiro sat down on a flat rock, eyes roving along the front of the building from where he sat. There was no movement in the glass windows. The marble-like stone had gotten dusty from exposure to the elements, but the elegance of the architecture was clear to see.

“Takashi.”

Shiro accepted the water bottle from Ulaz with a soft smile. He had his own in his rucksack. Ulaz liked to share food and drink with him and try to spoil him in small ways, though. It was cute. Ulaz had grown his Mohawk-ish do into a short ponytail and looked really good in casual hiking clothes. Shiro maybe semi-deliberately let some of the water from the bottle run down his mouth, soaking the line of his throat and the top of his neckline. Ulaz’s breathing hitched into a low purr. Delighted, Shiro passed the bottle back.

“Shiro, did Black know about this place, d’you think?” Matt sat down across from them. Wild flowers grew around the rocks, yellow and pink. Shiro had some basic training in xenobotany and helped Colleen maintain the ship’s gardens sometimes, and he thought he’d seen similar-shaped flowers on New Altea. Hunk had said they were used as aromatics in Altean cuisine. If not for the distant cool sun visible in the sky beside the primary sun, or the alien architecture, or the distinct forms of the vegetation, it could have been any of several picturesque locations on Earth.

“There's very little of the universe she doesn't, but this time she’s not telling. I’m getting the vibe that it’s not actually dangerous but still worth being cautious about.”

Keith nodded. “If there’s some soldiers hiding out, or even a Robeast or two, we can take them on.”

Shiro agreed. The sea breeze was pleasant in this spot and he almost wanted to stop the expedition here. Maybe have a picnic on the grounds. Go back and hand over their on-site documentation to HQ or the Blades or the Altean Council or whoever, let them take care of it. It was not like him to think like this; he shook it off.

Keith and Ulaz had their blades out. Matt had his energy blaster charged and ready. Shiro clenched his fist and took a deep breath, willing his bayard to transform his right arm. Another layer of direct connection to Black had him feeling invincible. He went right up to the enormous, ornately carved main doors and laid his palm on the stone. He could feel rather than see the sensors, the momentary hush as some complex locking mechanism responded to the energy signature he bore.

The doors rumbled open.

The inside of the building was... hollow. Like an ancient castle they never finished constructing, or a cathedral emptied of pews and podium and all. Or a lighthouse without stairs. Goddamn he was bad at architectural description. There was a high platform near the very top, suspended from the centre of the structure. That was all they could see. No computer systems, no rooms, just row after row of windows and high stone walls. What purpose did this weird fortress/ballroom/church hybrid serve?...

“We found Haggar’s country house,” said Shiro, bursting into laughter. His voice echoed in the middle of the round hall. Sunlight streamed in through hundreds of windows and the sound of the ocean was deeper here, a pretty cool acoustic effect he would admit.

“Hah. But this has to be the second most bizarre Galra hideout I’ve ever seen.” Keith was walking with his blade held aloft, like he expected Galra terrorists to jump out of thin air. Which was technically a possibility.

“Only the second?” said Matt.

“Clone facility,” mumbled Keith.

“Do we have zipline? How do we get to that platform?” Sometimes he did miss the Paladin suits...

They did have equipment they’d brought along for mountain hiking.

Shiro’s boots left prints through a heavy layer of sandy dust. This place had been abandoned for a while. Wild rocky plants were peeking from edges in the stonework. He felt perversely at peace here, even as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

A big hand slid over his stomach. Shiro leaned into Ulaz’s embrace for a moment. The taller man spoke quietly in his ear. “So, you feel the energy too.”

“What is this place?”

“Your speculation is astute. She experimented with her magic here. And rested.”

Keith swung and secured a line about ten feet above floor level. He tested it, then climbed up impossibly fast, boots blurring over the stones. Matt threw up his own Olkari tech rope, spacing out his target so he would reach an eastern window almost opposite from Keith.

“I think Black wanted me to come here.”

Ulaz nodded. “This was almost certainly built after Honerva’s marriage, but before the destruction of her homeworld. She must have visited sometimes. Perhaps even after her corruption.”

“Well, this is the weirdest birthday gift I ever got,” said Shiro, sending the thought to Black. She seemed hesitant but anticipatory.

“We’ll swap,” Matt yelled down at him. “You know how much I love exploring abandoned buildings!”

Keith was standing at his window now. Shiro’s left wrist buzzed. He accepted the video feed. “Okay, guess I gotta climb up there too.” Ulaz was looking at the feed too. Wide blue ocean for miles and miles.

“Race you,” said Ulaz, and before Shiro could reply, he was sprinting and leaping onto the walls. Shiro modified his right arm to a climbing grip and followed Ulaz.

He left the others behind to wander as he climbed his way to the very top. He had to know.

He’d seen platforms like this before. Images flashed into his mind, of Haggar hooded in the middle, her Druids circling her on the edge, the crackle and burn of energy focusing spells.

But this one was arranged very differently. Soft carpeting covered the floor of the platform, and there were plant pots along the periphery. The plants looked pretty similar to those he had seen outside on the grounds, but many of them were dried or dead. There was a narrow stand with a depression on top that he knew housed a crystal ball in the past. Somehow he was sure.

The centrepiece in the space, and now Shiro was thinking of attic rooms, was a sprawling fancy-looking wooden writing desk with a matching, high-backed chair that faced a huge open window to the sea. What looked like maps and other papers were laid on top, amid general clutter of curios and manual writing instruments. Some of the papers were thin and not weighted down by anything, yet they remained in place. Shiro reached out, instinctively bracing for electrocution. He remembered Haggar viscerally, in very specific ways.

Hot blue energy swirled around a medium-sized object lying half hidden under a star chart, inviting him. His fingers closed around it unpunished.

It was a snowglobe containing a space rocket and a small figure.

Shiro shrugged his rucksack off and sat on the chair. He wound up the clockwork motor from under the base. An intense blue light emanated from the globe, and soft music. He shoved some of the papers and things away to make some space, and then set the snowglobe down. It turned around in place slowly. The rocket was covered in endless snow, a real blizzard, but a miraculous one that never hid it from view. The music was oddly familiar.

The little figure beside the rocket had black dots for eyes. They stared at him through the glass.

The others must have agreed to leave him alone for a few minutes. Keith eventually put a quiet hand on his shoulder—he’d recognise the touch anywhere. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

“You took it with you to Kerberos. I remember.” Matt nodded at the snowglobe.

“A couple of years back Hunk came up to me and told me something, he was really apologetic and careful about it. He said, it’s fine if I had a bad relationship with my parents, or if they hurt me and I hated them for it, but he thought it wasn’t healthy for me to act like they didn’t exist.”

He took Ulaz’s hand and clasped their fingers together for a second, seeking and gaining some silent assurance.

“My mom actually asked me to talk to you about that,” said Keith. “I noticed we were drifting apart ever since I found her again. You’re not really ever resentful, Shiro, but you’re _human_. ... You know what I mean. We all noticed when you started avoiding even stuff like dinner invitations at the Holts’.”

“When did we swap personalities?” said Shiro, laughing. “I was depressed, yeah. But not because you guys still had living family and I was jealous I didn’t. It’s worse.”

“I hope you aren’t implying we became lovers because I am also an orphan.”

This terrible joke from such an unexpected source made Shiro’s mouth drop. Matt sniggered.

“Wait, you’re joking, right?”

Ulaz clapped his palm over his face. “You are aware I have living relatives.”

“Disowned racist aunts don’t count.”

Ulaz sighed, prompting Shiro to aim a light kick at his knees.

“I distracted you. Go on, please.”

“See, I knew I was raised by my grandpa, on my father’s side, until he died when I was 14. But I have the records so I know my parents died when I was eight. And they loved me. So I had eight years with them. And from the time I woke up in that tent on Earth, after escaping the Empire... I couldn’t remember that at all.”

Keith frowned. “You did lose a lot of memories. But torture will do that to a person. And other trauma.”

“I didn’t just forget my memories with my parents. Haggar... somehow deleted or broke my ability to access the memories that told me my parents and grandpa had _existed_. That's why none of you heard me talk about them during the war.”

Keith blinked. “You’re saying...”

“...She deliberately twisted my mind into not knowing I had grown up being loved by my family at all, just kind of sprang fully formed from the desert? Like a living blank slate with no sense of origin. While leaving other memories intact. Yeah, something like that.”

“I can’t even imagine that. The fuck?” Matt looked as horrified as he still felt.

“Some of the darkest, most precise magic possible,” Ulaz continued. “Mind control elevated to an art form. It is one of the last stages in turning a sentient being into a monster. A Robeast, even.”

Keith's knuckles turned white where he gripped the back of the chair.

“Intellectually I know there was someone and I know my ethnicity. That’s all. I knew I knew how to read, I didn’t remember who’d taught me. I didn’t even realise there could be a different way to be until I met Matt and Adam. You guys were so close to your parents. I only figured out the distinction after the war. I talked to Allura, I compared notes with Ulaz on what we know about Haggar’s track record.”

“I swear to God, every time we think we’ve seen the worst the Empire did and there’s always something else.”

“It is widely believed that her intense studies with the Rift creatures led to her corruption, but devising new ways to torment prisoners will do it just as well.”

“True. We all have the capacity to do evil things, but we can choose to resist embracing it. We just have to keep choosing that over and over.”

Matt came up to Shiro for a fist bump. “Trust Shiro to turn depressing shit into teaching moments.”

Shiro snorted. “Someone, somewhere out there has an online petition to get me put away for war crimes.”

“War crimes? _You_?”

“It got five signatures,” Keith piped up.

“See, five someones.”

Ulaz was browsing some of Haggar’s notes, wearing disposable gloves. He wasn’t Shiro’s spy doctor boyfriend for nothing. “What puzzles me is how these artefacts still remain. Most of Honerva’s personal effects were destroyed upon her death.”

“They were? By who?” Shiro frowned.

A low rumble sounded from somewhere and it wasn’t the ocean waves.

Shiro dropped his snowglobe into his bag and stood up just as everything around them started moving violently.

“Guys... I don’t think this is an earthquake,” said Matt.

“Get off the platform,” yelled Shiro. He closed his eyes, reaching out to Black.

He knew what to do. “Shiro?” Keith ducked as some plant pots crashed into the stone walls behind their heads.

“This entire castle will collapse within minutes. We can’t climb down. Except Ulaz.” The platform tilted sharply towards the open window. Ulaz caught Haggar’s desk by one leg, grabbing piles of papers.

“Shiro??”

Shiro exhaled noisily, lurching sidewise to compensate for the shaking. There was a moment where he thought it wouldn’t work, and he stamped out that doubt brutally. His right arm was stinging. “Keith, Matt, grab me round the waist, now.” It actually hurt as black liquid metal pierced through the bones of his shoulders, then fused into massive biomechanical wings. Shiro gritted his teeth and Keith didn’t even look shocked, but Matt screamed.

“I will see you very soon,” said Ulaz, before he dashed downwards fast as a tree squirrel, dodging debris.

Keith was slight in outward appearance but half-Galra by blood, and Matt had been lifting seriously; Shiro focused entirely on not dropping his precious cargo as the castle auto-demolitioned into dust, letting Black remotely handle the completely magical mechanics of his flight. _Pick up Ulaz first._

He spotted her over the ocean in a minute and several comms clicked to life. “I am safe. Wait there, we are headed your way.”

Some contrarian instinct wisely said, why wait?

Matt screamed even louder as Shiro flew them above the crashing waves, towards his Lion. Black telepathically noted her disapproval, but with some amusement. Keith tucked his head under Shiro’s chin helpfully, suddenly reminding him of the times he’d flown Black into the field to snatch a defiant but outmatched or outnumbered young Red Paladin out of harm’s way, and the many times Keith had reciprocated.

Matt continued to scream Shiro’s left ear off, piercing through the roar of the wind. Someone’s rucksack slipped off a shoulder, sending Shiro dipping waterwards. Matt’s scream turned to whoops of joy. Shiro gritted his teeth some more and regained altitude. His shoulders were on fire and he was surely going to lose his hearing in one ear.

The two suns cast their placid, eerie light on the waters and he closed his eyes for one moment, at perfect equilibrium. He felt the shadow on his face before he saw it.

 _I have you, my Paladin._ He was scooped up neatly in her eldritch jaws.

Keith and Matt rolled off him in the airlock and he rolled up his own body, allowing his wings to cushion his impact with the floor.

Then he turned around onto his stomach and immediately fell asleep.

Matt was playing Battleships against Ulaz and losing badly when Shiro got out of the pod. Keith looked both worried and fond. “I know you don’t like getting podded but Black and Ulaz agreed since your shoulders took a lot of stress.”

“’Getting podded’? That’s almost as disgusting as ‘moist’.”

“That is not what you said last night.” Keith hid his face in his hands. Ulaz had left his game to rub a towel over Shiro’s damp head. He could not say he minded the pampering, and he would be lying if he said he did. What concerned him was the speed at which his stoic, soft-spoken boyfriend was getting corrupted by the humans’ dirty sense of humour. (Mostly Matt’s.)

“We’re in space again,” said Shiro redundantly. The view from the windows was undeniable.

“We’re out of the quadrant. We are headed home because you refuse to keep your Lion’s mini-fridge stocked and I need some cold beer after whatever that was.”

“My Lion doesn’t have a mini-fridge,” said Shiro, kicking Matt out of the cockpit chair and connecting to the latest satellite feed over the moon they’d just left.

“My point exactly.”

A lull fell over the group as the video showed the clifftop they’d just managed to escape. There was no evidence that a castle had ever stood there. Not even debris. If not for the residual pain in his shoulders and waist, and the testimony of his companions, he might have thought he’d hallucinated the entire thing.

_Careful..._

“What triggered the collapse? Any idea? Nothing happened when I first touched the snowglobe.”

“Simply put... it was all magic. You noted how the papers stayed in place despite the strong ocean breeze.”

“How and where did the magic get stored after her passing and why didn’t this lot go down with the rest of her stash?”

Ulaz drummed his fingers on the back of the chair. Shiro stared at the oceanscape on the screen as if it would unlock the mystery.

“What if it was your snowglobe?” Keith suggested.

“But how?”

Shiro found his rucksack at the foot of the chair and took the globe out. He placed it gently on the console. It lit up on its own in violet and gold.

“Maybe it wanted to be found by you,” Keith said.

Shiro didn’t laugh.

His comms crackled with a voice call from far away. “Happy birthday Shiro! I hope you have a wonderful day, with lots of rest and good food. Expect a little parcel from me and Coran by tonight.”

“Thanks a lot, Allura. You won’t believe what happened today. Guess.”

“Er, why don’t you tell me?”

“He unlocked his wings and it was quiznamakazing! Except for when he almost dropped me into the ocean.”

“Is that Matthew? Excuse me, Shiro what and he _what_?” Half a dozen other connections sprang up on the screen and he was drowned in greetings and demands of video evidence. Shiro ran away before Matt pulled up the ‘dashcam’ footage from Black.

He sneaked into the hangar later that night to commune with Black in private. Even if he had a direct encrypted line right in his head, the physical act of sitting in his Lion was a comforting experience.

“Did you sense it?” said Shiro, thinking of the snowglobe sitting on his bedside table. He’d run his fingertips over the tiny kanji carved into the base in awe. Had he shown interest in space travel that early or did his parents simply intuit his future inclinations? Had his grandfather bequeathed a message from the stars?

He thought he was probably too old for presents, but it felt nice to receive them. Matt had gotten him a limited edition Gundam whose packaging text was all in Galran, which raised and answered too many uncomfortable questions. Keith had shoved his gift of a new scarf into his hiking bag with such force that Shiro suspected his friend had knitted it personally. He would have to ask Hunk. Allura and Coran had sent what looked like a samovar tea set. They knew he was rarely at home, and in fact it came with a card indicating that it should be placed in the Black Lion. Now Shiro wondered if _Black_ wanted the samovar. Maybe even the scarf and the Gundam. Where did he end and she begin?

And there was a whole bunch of presents he’d left unopened on his work table for tomorrow.

Ulaz was fast asleep—he’d sent Haggar’s documents off to New Altea to be examined and archived, and he’d cooked a hearty meal for Shiro with fresh groceries sent specially by the Holts, _and_ he’d insisted on sucking his brains out through his dick to make up for not fucking him senseless like he’d planned (thanks a lot, emergency mecha wings that rip through shoulderblades).

Shiro could get used to all this. Including the flying/gliding outside of a craft with real wings, thing. That was a scary, exciting thought.

_Yes._

_They’d have loved to meet you. And the others._

_Yes._

_When I was dead, I thought maybe I’d see them again. I don’t even remember what they looked like. I had to call up so many people just to find college photos of them. I called in so many favours. But I don’t remember being held by my mother. I don’t remember my father’s voice. Not even life with grandpa, which... She stole so much from me._

_I am sorry._

He leaned his head back. _Life is good though, you don’t see me complaining. There was a time when I didn’t think I’d reach 25. Then I did and_ then _I thought I wouldn’t reach 30. Now I’m here._

_You are._

_I want to live. I always have. Maybe someday the memories will come back. Like the snowglobe did. Black..._

_Shiro?_

_You think they’d be proud of me?_

_They are. You were, are and will be loved._

He smiled. _I think I see that now._ _Thank you and_ _Goodnight, Black._

**Author's Note:**

> i actually totally forgot it's shiro's birthday but subconsciously i must have remembered because on saturday my brain said "sit down and bash out 9k words in 3 different stories in under 48 hours after not writing a voltron fic for centuries".


End file.
